Reading the Novel
English 140

English Research Guide	Library Web Site
History Research Guide	Ask a Librarian
Syllabus (PDF)	Academic Resource Center
Revised Schedule (PDF)
Essay 2 Assignment (PDF)

How to Find:
Books | Journal Articles | Web Sites | Citing Sources

Finding Books

Using Catalogs to locate books:

1.) Ariadne

• Search by Keyword
• Find and Use Subject Headings
• Browse the shelves by Call Number

2.) MeLCat

• Search by Keyword
• Find and Use Subject Headings
• About MeLCat

3.) WestCat - Western Michigan's catalog

• Search by Keyword
• Find and Use Subject Headings
• Browse the shelves by Call Number
• Waldo Library: Hours and How to get to Western

4.) WorldCat and 5.) Interlibrary Loan

• Search by Keyword
• Find and Use Subject Headings
• Order item through Interlibrary Loan
  ($1 per filled request waived during Library Renovation)

See the English Research Guide: Finding Books

Sample Subject Headings:

• American Literature
  • American Literature History and Criticism
• English Literature
  • English Literature 19th Century History And Criticism

See also: Library of Congress Classification...

To find information about authors and their works:

• Dictionary Of Literary Biography, PS221 .D45, Reference
  Multi-volume series offering bio-bibliographical information on British and American authors. Each volume includes a cumulative index to locate entries on individual authors.
• Contemporary Literary Criticism, PN771 .C59, Reference
  Multi-volume collection. Excerpts from current criticism of the works of novelists, poets, playwrights, short story writers, and other creative writers.
  (Authors now living or who died after Dec. 31, 1959).
  To locate entries on individual authors, use the cumulative index and/or last volume.
• Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, PN771 .G27, Reference
  Multi-volume collection. Entries provide a comprehensive survey of an author's career or an individual work of literature, and several interpretations.
  (Authors who died between 1900 and 1960).
  To locate entries on individual authors, use the cumulative index and/or last volume.

Guides, Encyclopedias and Dictionaries

• OED Oxford English Dictionary, PE1625 M964 1989, Reference
• OED Oxford English Dictionary < about >fulltext online
• Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature, PN41 .B4 1991, Reference
• Oxford Companion to American Literature, PS21 .H3 1995, Reference
• Oxford Companion to English literature, PR19 .H3 2000, Reference

• The Rise of the Novel; Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding,
  PR851 .W38, Stacks, Watt, Ian.

 What are Scholarly Journals?

Scholarly Journals (Modern Fiction Studies)

• Authors are scholars or researchers in their fields.
• Authors cite their sources in footnotes, endnotes, and bibliographies.
• Individual issues have little or no advertising.
• Articles must go through a peer-review process.
• Articles usually report original scholarly research.
• Most illustrations are charts, figures, or graphs.
• Authors use the specialized language or jargon of the discipline.

Popular Magazines (Time, Atlantic Monthly)

• Authors are free lance writers or magazine staff members.
• Authors may mention sources, but rarely cite them in notes or bibliographies.
• Individual issues contain many advertisements.
• There is no peer review process. Articles are reviewed by editors or publishers.
• Illustrations are numerous and colorful.
• Articles are meant to inform and entertain an educated audience.
• Language is written for the general adult audience (no specialized jargon).

Scholarly or Not?
Use Ulrich's Periodicals Directory (Ref. Desk Z6941 .U5)
Look for section called "Document Type"
It MUST say "Academic/Scholarly Publication" to be considered scholarly!

Journal Indexes

See the English Research Guide: Using Indexes and Databases to help select an Index.
Off-Campus Access to Licensed Resources

MLA Bibliography < about >
The Modern Language Association International Bibliography indexes 3,000 periodicals as well as books, book chapters, and dissertations. Subject matter includes critical works on literature, language, linguistics, and folklore. Reviews of literary and scholarly works are not included. There are no abstracts.
Coverage: 1963 - Present.

Article Citation:
Marcus, Sharon. "The Profession of the Author: Abstraction, Advertising, and Jane Eyre" PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 110. 2 1995 Mar: 206-19.

Arts and Humanities Search < about >
Coverage: 1980 - Present.

America: History and Life < about >
America: History and Life is a bibliography of articles on the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.
Coverage: 1964 - Present.

Historical Abstracts < about >
Historical Abstracts is a reference guide to the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada, which are covered in America: History and Life).
Published since 1954.

Humanities Abstracts < about >
Humanities Abstracts is a bibliographic database that covers English language periodicals in the diverse subject areas of the humanities.
Coverage: Indexing - 1984 - present; Abstracting - 1994 - present.

Humanities Index, (Print)
Reference Index Case 5, AI3 .H8, Library has: 1974 - 1993; v.1-20
For more recent coverage, consult Humanities Abstracts

Essay and General Literature Index < about >
Cites essays contained in anthologies and collections published in the United States, Great Britain and Canada. Coverage spans the humanities and social sciences, including literary works, art history, drama, and film. Indexing: 1985 to present.

Essay and General Literature Index (Print)
A good source for locating literary criticism in collections of essays.
Reference Stacks, AI3 . Es73, Library has: vol 1 - 1900 - Present.

Do you have access to a journal?  

1.) Ariadne (print)

• Title search on Title of the Journal to locate print journal

2.) Electronic Journal Finder (online)

• Title search on Title of the Journal to locate article in a Full Text Database

3.) WestCat - Western Michigan's catalog

• Title search on Title of the Journal
• Waldo Library - Hours and How to get to Western

4.) Interlibrary Loan

• Order item through Interlibrary Loan
  ($1 per filled request waived during Library Renovation)
• Use *only* when the journal is not available through Ariadne, Electronic Journals, or WestCat.

English journals available at our library:
List of Periodicals in English

FULL-TEXT RESOURCES

Electronic Journal Finder

Off-Campus Access to Licensed Resources
Advanced Search Help

JSTOR < about > Title List.
Full text database of scholarly journals in many disciplines.

Project Muse < about >
Project MUSE offers the full text of Johns Hopkins University Press scholarly journals.

Wilson Select < about >
Contains indexed and abstracted articles in ASCII full text; records are from Readers' Guide Abstracts, Social Sciences Abstracts, Humanities Abstracts, among other abstract databases.
Coverage: 1994-Present. Title List.

Proquest < about >
Proquest Research Library is a fulltext database that includes graphics with the text for many articles. You may search the entire database or select specific subject modules, such as Arts, Women's Studies, or Humanities. You also may select to search only peer-reviewed journals.

 Websites

To find Web sites, use search engines and web indexes. See Finding Web Sites and Web Indexes and Directories.
See also Finding Web Sites on Literature.

WorldCat < about >
WorldCat contains bibliographic citations for high-quality Web sites on a variety of subjects. When you search WorldCat for Web sites, remember to check the box for "Internet Resources" in the section called "Limit type to". Sites are selected according to a collection development policy that emphasizes quality, authoritativeness, and durability.

General Web Indexes on Literature

• Academic Info American Literature
  An Annotated Directory of Internet Resources.
• American and English Language Internet Resources
  Maintained by Winnie Shyam Associate Librarian, Head of Reference Page, Buley Library, Southern Connecticut State University.
• Voice of the Shuttle Literature in English
  This site's mission is to to provide a structured and briefly annotated guide to online resources in the humanities. Managed by the University of California, Santa Barbara English Dept.

Major themes in Reading the Novel

Postcolonialism

• The Postcolonial Web
  A project funded by the University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore
• Post-Colonial Studies and Orientalism
  Maintained by Randall Halle, the University of Rochester.

  Postmodernism/ Modernism

• Postmodernism
  Maintained by Dr. Mary Klages, University of Colorado at Boulder.

Victorian Novel

• "The Victorian Novel" Notes from Naomi Jacobs, Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia
  Maintained by Gregg A. Hecimovich, Vanderbilt University

Web sites on Authors for Reading the Novel

• Daniel Defoe (On) The Education Of Women, 1719
  Part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook, © Paul Halsall, August 1998.
• DANIEL DEFOE, HIS NOVEL 'ROXANA', AND BRITISH COLONIALISM
  Maintained by evren@ae.metu.edu.tr
• Annotated Bibliography Sample: Coetzee's Foe
  From the English Department at Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
• J. M. Coetzee
  From the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California, Berkeley.
• The Brontë Sisters Web
  Maintained by Mitsuharu Matsuoka, Associate Professor, Nagoya University.
• a web guide to Charlotte Bronte from literaryhistory.com
  Copyright ©1998-2003 by Jan Pridmore
• Tsitsi Dangarembga
  Maintained by Cora Agatucci, Professor of English, Central Oregon Community College.
• Virginia Woolf (1882-1941):A SHORT BIOGRAPHY
  copyright © S.N.Clarke & VWSGB 2000
• Michael Cunningham
  From Lycos

Use these points to evaluate the credibility of Websites:

1. Accuracy
How reliable is the information? Are there editors and fact checkers?
2. Authority
What are the author's qualifications? Is the publisher reputable?
3. Objectivity
Is the author trying to sway opinion? Is the information free from bias?
4. Currency
Is the publication date indicated? Is the source up to date?
5. Coverage
Does the site cover the topic comprehensively, or are there information gaps?

Sites that provide guidance on evaluating Websites:

• Evaluating Web Resources
  Widener University Library
• Evaluating Information Found on the Internet
  Johns Hopkins University Library
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, or Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Resources
  New Mexico State University Library
• Thinking Critically about World Wide Web Resources
  UCLA College Library

Book citation:

Farr, Judith. The Passion of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge: Harvard UP, (1992).

Jarraway, DR. "Montage of an Otherness Deferred: Dreaming Subjectivity
	in Langston Hughes." American Literature 68.4 (1996): 819-847.

Story, Ralph D. "Gender and ambition: Zora Neale Hurston in the Harlem
	Renaissance." Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston. Ed.
	Gloria Cronin. New York: G. K. Hall, 1998. 189-207.

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers
5th ed., New York : Modern Language Association of America, 1999.
Reference, LB2369 .G53 1999.

• MLA Style From The University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center.
• MLA Style From the Modern Language Association (MLA).
  (you must follow the links for MLA style).
• MLA Style Form Guide from the Ohio State University Libraries
• Using MLA Style to Cite and Document Sources
  (includes information on citing electronic sources)

When writing English papers, always follow MLA style!!

 PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism: copying or stealing another’s work or ideas.

To avoid plagiarism, you must cite:

• spoken and written quotations
• ideas and opinions
• facts that are not general knowledge
• paraphrases of all of the above

See Plagiarism: What it Is and How to Recognize and Avoid It
(Produced by Writing Tutorial Services, Indiana University)

When in doubt, ask your instructor!